The French socialist leader Leon Blum, writing in Le Populaire of 28 April, 1939, said he was shocked at the contradiction between British Labour’s verbal anti-Fascism and its continued opposition to conscription, which it maintained up to the outbreak of war
firm to other work of national importance. There were, according to historian Andrew Roberts, who wrote drawing on official sources, “myriad” strikes at Scottish mines over trivial matters, and strikes in the same year in ship-building yards at Hartlepool, Plymouth and South Shields. There was no hint of any of this in Foot’s book. A particular target for Foot’s sneers in Guilty Men was Sir Thomas Inskip, the Conservatives’ Minister for Defence
Co-ordination. Actually it was Inskip, a lawyer and former intelligence officer, who as much as almost anyone saved Britain, ensuring the Air Force received a large share of what defence money was available for modern fighters like the Spitfire and Hurricane and chains of radar warning stations. These did not appear by magic at the Battle of Britain in 1940 – they were the result of pre-war planning and the right allocation of priorities.
Foot in the same book also sneered at the Polish Army – “that vast herd of horses” – for cowardice, only good for fleeing, a charge which at least had the merit of originality. The Russian invasion of Poland in 1939 (which forced the Poles to resist on two fronts and was the ultimate reason they fell to Germany) was not so much as mentioned. Foot’s post-war achievements as a practical politician were entirely negative, though he at least played a big part in ruining the INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM April 2010 43